'So on those happy days of yore
Oft as I dare to dwell once more,
Still must I miss the friends so tried,
Whom Death has severed from my side.
But ever when true friendship binds,
Spirit it is that spirit finds;
In spirit then our bliss we found,
In spirit yet to them I'm bound.'
UHLAND.
Margaret was ready long before the appointed time, and had
leisure enough to cry a little, quietly, when unobserved, and to
smile brightly when any one looked at her. Her last alarm was
lest they should be too late and miss the train; but no! they
were all in time; and she breathed freely and happily at length,
seated in the carriage opposite to Mr. Bell, and whirling away
past the well-known stations; seeing the old south country-towns
and hamlets sleeping in the warm light of the pure sun, which
gave a yet ruddier colour to their tiled roofs, so different to
the cold slates of the north.
Broods of pigeons hovered around
these peaked quaint gables, slowly settling here and there, and
ruffling their soft, shiny feathers, as if exposing every fibre
to the delicious warmth. There were few people about at the
stations, it almost seemed as if they were too lazily content to
wish to travel; none of the bustle and stir that Margaret had
noticed in her two journeys on the London and North-Western line.
Later on in the year, this line of railway should be stirring and
alive with rich pleasure-seekers; but as to the constant going to
and fro of busy trades-people it would always be widely different
from the northern lines. Here a spectator or two stood lounging
at nearly every station, with his hands in his pockets, so
absorbed in the simple act of watching, that it made the
travellers wonder what he could find to do when the train whirled
away, and only the blank of a railway, some sheds, and a distant
field or two were left for him to gaze upon. The hot air danced
over the golden stillness of the land, farm after farm was left
behind, each reminding Margaret of German Idyls--of Herman and
Dorothea--of Evangeline. From this waking dream she was roused.
It was the place to leave the train and take the fly to Helstone.
And now sharper feelings came shooting through her heart, whether
pain or pleasure she could hardly tell. Every mile was redolent
of associations, which she would not have missed for the world,
but each of which made her cry upon 'the days that are no more,'
with ineffable longing. The last time she had passed along this
road was when she had left it with her father and mother--the
day, the season, had been gloomy, and she herself hopeless, but
they were there with her. Now she was alone, an orphan, and they,
strangely, had gone away from her, and vanished from the face of
the earth. It hurt her to see the Helstone road so flooded in the
sun-light, and every turn and every familiar tree so precisely
the same in its summer glory as it had been in former years.
Nature felt no change, and was ever young.